guinea pigs: meals, meds, prophecies

[from Wikipedia (mostly)]

The guinea pig plays an important role in the folk culture of many Indigenous South American groups, especially as a food source, but also in folk medicine and in community religious ceremonies. Since the 1960s, efforts have been made to increase consumption of the animal outside South America.

cuy being raised at home in Andean fashion

The scientific name of the common species is Cavia porcellus, with porcellus being Latin for "little pig". Cavia is New Latin; it is derived from cabiai, the animal's name in the language of the Galibi tribes once native to French Guiana. Cabiai may be an adaptation of the Portuguese çavia (now savia), which is itself derived from the Tupi word saujá, meaning rat. Guinea pigs are called quwi or jaca in Quechua and cuy or cuyo (pl. cuyes, cuyos) in the Spanish of Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. Ironically, breeders tend to use the more formal "cavy" to describe the animal, while in scientific and laboratory contexts it is far more commonly referred to by the more colloquial "guinea pig".

Moche guinea pig

The common guinea pig was first domesticated as early as 5000 BC for food by tribes in the Andean region of South America (present-day the southern part of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia), some thousands of years after the domestication of the South American camelids. Statues dating from ca. 500 BC to 500 AD that depict guinea pigs have been unearthed in archaeological digs in Peru and Ecuador. The Moche people of ancient Peru worshipped animals and often depicted the guinea pig in their art. From ca. 1200 AD to the Spanish conquest in 1532, selective breeding resulted in many varieties of domestic guinea pigs, which form the basis for some of the modern domestic breeds. They continue to be a food source in the region; many households in the Andean highlands raise the animal, which subsists off the family's vegetable scraps. Folklore traditions involving guinea pigs are numerous; they are exchanged as gifts, used in customary social and religious ceremonies, and frequently referenced in spoken metaphors. They also play a role in traditional healing rituals by folk doctors, or curanderos, who use the animals to diagnose diseases such as jaundice, rheumatism, arthritis, and typhus. They are rubbed against the bodies of the sick, and are seen as a supernatural medium. Black guinea pigs are considered especially useful for diagnoses. The animal also may be cut open and its entrails examined to determine whether the cure was effective. These methods are widely accepted in many parts of the Andes, where Western medicine is either unavailable or distrusted.

 cuy asado

Guinea pig meat is high in protein and low in fat and cholesterol, and is described as being similar to rabbit and the dark meat of chicken. The animal may be served fried (chactado or frito), broiled (asado), or roasted (al horno), and in urban restaurants may also be served in a casserole or a fricassee. Ecuadorians commonly consume sopa or locro de cuy, a soup dish. Pachamanca or huatia, a process similar to barbecueing, is also popular, and is usually served with corn beer (chicha) in traditional settings.

happy sad in South America

[from Adelina Bash @ The Santiago Times, 4 July 2011]

Chile among South America’s least happy nations, study finds

Though Chile has one of South America’s strongest economies, a recent study of happiness rates it second-to-last in the region, leading experts to assert that national happiness is not determined by a nation’s wealth or economic development.

The survey as conducted in Chile, Perú, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela.

Happiness in Chile was on par with happiness in the sample’s poorest country: Bolivia.

“Money does not determine happiness,” Pablo González Vicente, president of Cimagroup — the marketing analysis firm that conducted the study — said to El Mercurio. “What is more important is the level of inequality in countries: in general, the countries with the most equal distribution of wealth are happier than those with a lot of inequality.”

While there was little correlation between wealth and happiness, the study did determine other factors that appeared to influence national satisfaction.

People who live in warmer climates, for example, tend to be happier than those in colder ones, the study found. Within Chile, the cities in the warmer north were on average happier than those in the south, where the weather is much colder.

Overall, the analysis found that people were most satisfied with their family life and least satisfied with their financial situation.

Financial satisfaction, however, seemed to be determined not by the amount of money a person had, but instead by their expectations of what that money should mean.

For example, Venezuela, which the study determined was the happiest country overall, had a 56 percent economic satisfaction rate. Chileans, on the other hand, were wealthier but had a lower average satisfaction rate of about 33 percent.

Along with climate, family and finances, researchers found that happiness was influenced by a person satisfaction with his or her love life, health, job and physical appearance.

The importance of these factors varied between countries. For Chileans, personal finances were the most important; for Bolivians job satisfaction ranked the highest; and for Colombians and Peruvians love and relationships had the biggest impact.

“Even though we share the same language and may have similar histories, we are not the same,” González said of the results. There is no one indicator of happiness, he said. Instead, it seems, “every country has its own way of looking at life.”

Lima says no to GMO

[from The Independent, 19 June 2011]

Peru's capital declares itself a GMO-free zone

Peru's capital Lima declared itself a "GMO-free zone" in a municipal ordinance on Thursday in response to a controversial government decree that critics feared would see the country flooded with genetically modified organisms.

Lima's Mayor Susana Villarán

The city council, lead by Mayor Susana Villarán, officially declared the city of eight million a "territory free of transgenic and genetically modified organisms," to protect the population's health and preserve biodiversity and the environment.

Similar measures have already been enacted in other parts of the country in response to an April 15 decree regarding "biosafety," which Peru's Minister of Agriculture, Rafael Quevedo, said was only intended to regulate entry procedures for GMOs among various government agencies responsible for biodiversity.

Several cities in addition to Lima as well as agricultural groups, agronomists and doctors denounced the government decree when it was was published in April.

The declaration comes one week after the legislature approved a law that put in place a ten-year moratorium on imports of genetically modified cultures and seeds into Peru, unless they are to be used for research purposes.

Peru's President Alan Garcia

The moratorium must still be approved by President Alan Garcia, who can send it back to Congress for changes before he leaves office on July 28.

According to the Agriculture Ministry, Peru is one of the world's largest exporters of organic food, including coffee and cocoa, with $3 billion a year in revenues and 40,000 certified producers.

cocoa beans

Mercado Integrado Latinoamericano (MILA)

[from MercoPress, 6 April 2011]

Chile, Colombia, Peru launch integrate stock markets beginning May 30

Operations of a joint stock market linking Chile, Colombia and Peru are scheduled to begin May 30. The group, known as the Integrated Latin American Market, or Mila, said Tuesday that the decision was taken following two rounds of successful testing.

Mila will list 560 companies and becomes the second largest of the region by capitalization

On April 15, the companies that will trade on the joint exchange will start to list, Mila was quoted on Dow Jones Newswires.

Last year, Chile, Colombia and Peru said they would merge their stock markets to form one cross-trading platform. The integration was expected to be finished by the end of 2010, but it was postponed.

Officials announced earlier that the new platform will list some 560 companies, combining the listings from each individual country, making it the largest Latin American exchange by number of companies listed and second-largest by market capitalization.

Meanwhile Latin American stocks rose to their highest since June 2008 on Tuesday, but profit-taking in Mexico and signs Chile's rally may be running out of steam could limit gains in the coming sessions.

Investors bet a move on Tuesday by China to tighten borrowing costs would help manage to tame strong growth without undermining high prices for Latin America's key commodities.

“China will keep growing, just at a slower pace,” said Gerardo Copca, a strategist at consultancy Metanalisis.

China is Brazil's top trading partner and also one of Chile's top customers for its copper.

Chilean stocks led gains in major regional markets, with the IPSA index .IPSA rising 0.56 percent to close at its highest since late January as industrial conglomerate Copec CPO.SN rose 1.99 percent.

Surprisingly strong growth data in Chile backed bets that the country's stocks could see solid profit growth during the first quarter.

a new joint stock exchange

[from Andres Oppenheimer @ Miami Herald, 16 February 2011]

South American stock exchange: the way to go

The merger of the New York and Frankfurt stock exchanges to create the world’s biggest stock market made big headlines this week, but there is a lesser-known process in South America that should also draw our attention — the union of the Chilean, Peruvian and Colombian stock exchanges.

The stock exchanges of the three South American countries announced recently that they have finished the regulatory paperwork to start joint operations, and that they are preparing to do so within the next few months.

The three-country stock market, known as the Integrated Latin American Market, or by its Spanish initials MILA, will be Latin America’s second-largest stock market, after Brazil’s.

In a telephone interview this week, Juan Pablo Cordoba, president of the Colombian Stock Exchange, told me that “there is a strong commitment by the three countries to get it started before the end of the first semester this year.’’ MILA’s launching date will be announced after an internal technical try-out session next month, he said.

The idea behind MILA is that, in an increasingly globalized world, where the biggest stock markets are merging, it will be increasingly difficult for medium-sized or small economies to attract investments unless they are part of a bigger financial market, Cordoba said.

In addition to the New York and Frankfurt stock exchanges, the London and Toronto stock exchanges have announced their own mergers, and the Singapore stock exchange announced in October that it plans to buy the Australian Stock Exchange.

While the economies of Chile, Peru and Colombia have grown steadily in recent years, they are small by international standards. By unifying their operations, they will make it easier for domestic and foreign investors to buy stock in each of the participating countries’ companies, thus increasing their corporations’ ability to sell their stocks and attract investments.

“Colombian companies will not just have access to Colombian investors, but to those of Chile and Peru as well,’’ Cordoba said. “They will have access to more investors, and to a bigger pool of capital.’’

A second advantage, he said, is that “it will make us more visible to international investors, because it’s easier to invest in integrated markets than in individual countries.”

Unlike the New York-Frankfurt stock exchange merger, the Chile-Peru-Colombia stock market union will not initially be a merger of the companies running the stock exchanges, but an “operative integration” of the three stock exchanges.

Two of the participating stock exchanges, those of Peru and Colombia, are planning to go a step further and announce the merger of their respective holding companies later this year, he said.

Later, if everything goes well, other Latin American stock exchanges may join the group, he added.

“In Latin America, we have been talking about financial integration for the past 50 years, and nothing has been done,” Cordoba said. “We are doing something concrete, from the bottom up.”
Will it work, I asked Alberto Bernal, chief analyst with Bulltick Capital Markets in Miami.

“Sure. It will be very relevant for the development of capital markets in each of the three countries. And if Mexico joins then in the future, it will be even more so,” Bernal said.

My opinion: The Chile-Peru-Colombia stock market integration couldn’t have been more timely.

There is a new world trend of increasingly fewer and bigger stock exchanges, and countries without huge internal markets that are not part of any larger stock market — such as Argentina, Ecuador and Central American countries — will find it more difficult to attract capitals and make their companies more competitive.

We may be witnessing the redrafting of Latin America’s financial architecture. Will MILA be extended to include more countries in the region soon? Will the stock markets of Brazil and Mexico team up to become big players in the world financial scene? Will there ultimately be a unified Latin American stock exchange.

Latin American governments have failed to advance the cause of integration despite grandiose announcements at regional summits that they have created a region-wide common market. Maybe the region’s stock exchanges will be able to start doing what politicians have failed to do for so many years. We should wish them luck.